Daily Archives: January 10, 2013

Well, not really. But if you view the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC) meme, as I do, as a short-hand for the more general idea of using Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS), then yes, it can change the whole political game for progressives if President Obama dares to use it.

Literal TDC proposals would solve the debt-ceiling, but they won’t solve the larger problem of defeating the austerity politics that is so close to getting the cuts to social safety net and important discretionary government programs that austerians have long sought. PCS game-changer proposals are the ones calling for, or analyzing the impact of, PCS options aimed at paying off the national debt and covering anticipated federal deficit spending for some years. Continue reading →

Based on my new understanding of Fiat Money, I’ve concluded that it is both logical and desirable for the U.S. sovereign government to issue and spend MORE dollars than it collects back in taxes. Doing so accomplishes two fundamental goals:

It enables the sovereign government to purchase from the Private Sector goods and services which will benefit society as a whole; and

It enables the businesses and households in the Private Sector to build up a reserve of fiat dollars which can be used to expand the goods and services available in the Private Sector economy. Continue reading →

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I appeared today on The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen, broadcast by WNHN 94.7 in Concord, New Hampshire. The topic of our discussion was austerity, disaster capitalism, the upcoming sequestration, Washington corruption and incompetence, and the exaggerations promulgated by Fix the Debt and other such organizations to scare people into undermining progressive government. Arnie’s questions were great as always. You can listen to the podcast of the show at the link below. My segment appears about halfway through the first hour, after the musical break at the 28 minute mark:

Deborah “Arnie” Arnesen is a former member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives, a former fellow of the Harvard Institute of Politics, and was the Democratic nominee in the New Hampshire 1992 gubernatorial race. She also ran for the U.S. Congress in 1996, and is a very well-known New Hampshire political figure and radio personality.

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The debt ceiling standoff is a massive national distraction, as is the rampaging blogospheric discussion of the standoff and its various possible resolutions. I am convinced that both the White House and Congress are eager to keep the debt ceiling debate and conflict alive to distract the country from a much more important reality: that they are currently negotiating the final shape of an economically punishing and magnificently stupid austerity package that will be substituted in for sequestration cuts due to take effect in March. The austerity package is Washington’s obsequious response to the disaster capitalism cattle stampede that has been urged on by Pete Peterson, Fix the Debt and affiliated groups of debt hysterics. Whatever combination of tax increases and spending cuts are finally accepted, the result will be to tie a fiscal cement block amounting to about 1.5% of GDP to the legs of an economy that is barely treading water.

But on the odd chance that the White House is actually serious about bringing a quick end to this standoff, the President should make a curt and frank public statement that plainly calls on Republicans to discipline the incompetents in their increasingly ridiculous party before they humiliate the party even further. The statement should go something like this.

The New York Times has just run two articles confirming that President Obama intends to appoint Jacob Lew as Treasury Secretary Geithner’s replacement. Most people assume that Geithner is a creature of Wall Street through direct employment, but Geithner never drew a paycheck directly from Wall Street. Geithner worked for a wholly-controlled subsidiary of Wall Street – the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Lew is the real deal, another brick in Obama’s creation of Wall Street on the Potomac. While the first NYT article ignored Lew’s work on Wall Street, the second article simply tries to minimize it. Continue reading →

I will be appearing today on The Attitude with Arnie Arnesen, broadcast by WNHN 94.7 in Concord, New Hampshire. My appearance is scheduled for 11:30 AM EST. The discussion will be wide-ranging, but I hope to focus on the just-concluded fiscal cliff deal, the upcoming Washington battle over the debt ceiling and the sequester, and the misguided bipartisan push for austerity in the context of high unemployment and weak growth. Maybe The Coin will come up too!